LUCEA, Hanover — Leader of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Prime Minister Andrew Holness has rejected claims by the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) that only parliamentarians will have access to the Government’s $40-billion Shared Prosperity through Accelerated Improvement to our Road Network (SPARK) road-improvement project aimed at modernising more than 2,000 roads islandwide.

“I don’t know if they don’t listen carefully or if they are deliberately trying to confuse with disinformation,” said Holness.

The SPARK programme was announced by Holness during his presentation in the 2023-204 Budget Debate in the House of Representatives last March.

Since then, there have been claims that municipal corporations, which have control over parochial roads, will not have a say in how roads are selected for repairs.

The most recent claim came from PNP General Secretary Dr Dayton Campbell during a meeting in Brown’s Town, St Ann, last Thursday night.

According to Campbell, if Holness Administration had an interest in local government, it would have allocated money to councillors to fix roads also.

But addressing a massive crowd of green-clad supporters in Lucea, Hanover, shortly after midnight on Friday, Holness rubbished Campbell’s claim.

“They said that this SPARK programme has no allocation for councillors, it is only MPs. Let me tell you, the allocation for the SPARK programme is at [a] minimum $150 million and it will go up as high as $300 million per constituency. The money is not allocated to MPs, it is allocated to the constituency.

”The constituency includes the MPs and the councillors. All of them have to work together because some roads are parish council [municipal corporation] roads and some are farm roads, local roads, [and] community roads,” said Holness.

“So, the MPs and the councillors have to work with you the people to come up with the determination of which roads [are to be repaired]…,” added Holness.

He pointed out that the programme is being funded by the central government and therefore after consultations, MPs are responsible for submitting to the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation the list of roads that are to be repaired.

Holness said every division in every constituency is expected to start submitting roads to be repaired after having consultations with stakeholders starting the first week of March.

The prime minister further noted that the decision was made not to start the programme earlier so as not to give the impression that the programme is being used to win today’s local government election.